The Northman: A Call to the Gods

By Robert Eggers, Alexander Skarsgård, Ethan Hawke and Sjón

The Northman: A Call to the Gods is the official look at how this epic Viking revenge thriller was conceived, written, cast, and produced by acclaimed director Robert Eggers.
 

Set against the ruthless backdrop of tenth-century Norse territory, The Northman is the a new epic Viking revenge thriller by acclaimed director Robert Eggers (The Witch [2015] and The Lighthouse [2019]), featuring an all-star cast including Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, and Björk.

Compiled from fascinating interviews with the cast and crew, inspiring storyboards, exclusive behind-the-scenes photographs—including the director’s own firsthand account of his creative processes in writing and directing—The Northman: A Call to the Gods explores the cold and forbidding world of the Vikings, their customs, traditions, and relentless thirst for battle and vengeance that inspired Eggers to write this compelling Norse saga.

Learn how the wardrobe department recreated the intricate chain mail armor and costumes of Viking berserkers and warriors; delve into the research behind the art department’s visual inspiration for replicating the villages of Hrafnsey and Freysdalur; and get the inside scoop on the challenges the cast encountered when creating the iconic characters of Amleth, Olga, Queen Gurdrún, and the Seeress. The Northman: A Call to the Gods is the perfect companion for both film fans and anyone interested in Viking history and legends.

PROFILE OF AN AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR: Using acclaimed director Robert Eggers’ own firsthand account, The Northman: A Call to the Gods delivers a revealing profile of his inspirations, and his creative process.

EXCLUSIVE PHOTOGRAPHS: Explore dozens of photographs of the set, crew, director Robert Eggers, and the award-winning cast, including Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, and Björk.

GO BEHIND THE SCENES: Delve into never-before-seen storyboards and set designs that give a glimpse into the fascinating art and craft of filmmaking.

PERFECT FOR FILM ENTHUSIASTS:  The Northman: A Call to the Gods is the perfect gift for movie fans and anyone interested in Viking legend and lore.  
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Insight Editions
• Release date: Nov 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781647229078

Robert Eggers

Robert Eggers is a Brooklyn-based writer and director. Originally from New Hampshire, Eggers got his professional start directing and designing experimental and classical theatre in New York City. Eggers eventually transitioned to film, directing several short films and working extensively as a designer for film, television, print, theater, and dance. The Witch, his feature film debut as writer and director, won the Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic category at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered to critical acclaim. It also garnered two Independent Spirit Award wins for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. His second feature film, The Lighthouse, starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, premiered at Directors' Fortnight in Cannes and won the FIPRESCI prize. The film was nominated for a 2019 Academy Award for cinematography. Eggers has recently completed his Viking revenge saga starring Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgård, and is developing several projects, including a reimagining of F.W. Murnau’s classic Nosferatu.

Book preview

Cover: The Northman, by Robert Eggers

Foreword by Alexander Skarsgard Preface by Ethan Hawke Introduction by Robert Eggers and Sjón

The Northman

A Call to the Gods

Inside Robert Eggers Epic Viking Revenge Thriller

Simon Abrams

The Northman, by Robert Eggers, Insight Editions

FOREWORD BY

ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD

On the island of Öland in the middle of the Baltic Sea lies one of the most famous runestones in Scandinavia named the Karlevi Runestone. It was raised in memory of the sea-warrior Sibbi the Good, who was Fuldarr’s son. In the 1920s my great-grandfather built a simple wooden house on Öland, not too far from the Karlevi Runestone, which has been in our family ever since. As a child I would spend every summer on Öland, and this eighty-five-mile-long limestone island was—and still is—my favorite place on earth. When I was seven years old my grandfather, who was an enthusiastic hiker, took me for a walk on Stora Alvaret, a barren limestone plateau that stretches the length of almost the entire island and which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (I highly recommend a visit to this magical place.) On our way home, grandpa asked if I wanted to see a runestone. I had absolutely no idea what a runestone was, so of course I said yes. When we arrived to the Karlevi Runestone my first impression was that it looked nothing more than a massive boulder. However, as we approached, its engraved epigraph appeared to be slithering like a snake across the stone. Grandpa urged me to run my finger along the inscription and to imagine that I was standing next to the Viking who carved and erected the runestone a millennia ago. Perhaps an ancestor of ours, since Skarsgård is derived from Skare’s gård (Skare was a Viking chieftain from the southern part of the island and gård means farm). It was the first time I ever felt the dizzying sensation of existing in both the past and the present simultaneously.

When we returned home we spent the evening in front of the fireplace, and Grandpa recounted stories of famous Vikings and their expeditions. He told me about Ingvar the Far-Traveled, who in 1041 set sail from Sweden with twenty-six langskips—only one would return—and led the last Viking campaign in the Caspian Sea. He narrated the legend of the Varangians, who with just a few ships tried to conquer Constantinople—the most powerful and heavily fortified city in the world at the time—and a suicide mission so insane that the Byzantine emperor later hired the Varangians as his personal bodyguards.

As we drank tea from the ridiculously oversized mugs Grandpa loved, he narrated fascinating and outlandish tales from Norse mythology about the Norns—three women who sit under the Yggdrasill tree and weave the Fates of man and who are the most powerful entities in the cosmos. And about the wolf Fenrir, who the Vikings believed would be chained until Ragnarök, the apocalypse, at which point he would then be able to break his shackles, swallow Ódinn, and devour the entire sun! At midnight, as the last embers glowed in the fireplace, Grandpa put me to bed. The man who leaned over to kiss me goodnight was no longer a retired mid-level administrative controller from Kalmar, but instead a battle-hardened Viking chieftain. I drifted off to sleep, and with every heartbeat I could feel his blood pumping through my veins.

PREFACE BY

ETHAN HAWKE

When I arrived in Belfast to begin filming The Northman the global pandemic was in full force. There was no vaccine yet. I was tested before I left home and when I arrived, I had to quarantine in my hotel room, and I was only allowed contact with a select group of people in the production staff. The transportation crew had one colored vest, hair and makeup another color, and the camera department their own so that they could remain isolated as much as possible within their respective groups. In addition, each department stayed within its own circle. Colors were not allowed to mix. And yet… there was something inspiring about it all.

Hundreds of cast and crew were performing extraordinary efforts for the gift of being able to make a film together. There was a sense of gratitude I had never experienced in a film production. I was escorted through the offices and witnessed some of the most remarkable preparations for filmmaking I’d ever seen: period-specific Viking langskips being handmade, with elaborate research drawings covering every wall; armor meticulously crafted; and Alexander Skarsgård working out with a stuntman in a homemade gym—he looked like a cross between Hamlet and Conan. I was given a tour through the massive sets, which were all being built with a level of authenticity that was breathtaking. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke’s intricate lighting plans were already being worked out, like the incantation of a spell. It was clear this swirling team of craftsmen were unified in one ambitious goal: the aspiration for excellence.

When I was introduced to Robert Eggers for rehearsal, we were all masked. Willem Dafoe and I began crawling on all fours—shirtless in Robert’s office—pretending to initiate our future King Aurvandil War-Raven through pagan rituals, barking and howling like dogs and shouting our Icelandic verse through our cloth masks. It was at once both ridiculous and the most hard-earned rehearsal of my life. No one present on this film project was going to go down without a fight.

Movies, at their best, are built on the power of harnessing a collective imagination. The underlying question is, can the director and the producing staff organize a team of artisans around a story so that everyone’s sweat, passion, intelligence, research, humor, love, and effort somehow form a cocoon around the script—eventually releasing a film that flies away in some new, confident, wondrous incarnation? I’ve been acting for over thirty years, and I’ve only witnessed it actually happen a handful of times. But when it does happen, it’s inspiring in a way that goes beyond filmmaking. As tough, and cruel, and bitter as the world can be, humanity cannot be completely lost if a company this large can discover a unity of purpose for the simple goal of making something beautiful.

INTRODUCTION BY

ROBERT EGGERS AND SJÓN

Hljóðs bið ég allar helgar kindir

Silence, all who hear my story so speaks the Seeress of the epic poem Völuspá, as she begins reciting her tale and prophesy of the creation of the world and its final destruction. Her poetic utterances create the world in a string of stanzas that stretch from the great nothing, or Ginnungagap in Norse mythology, until the Nordic apocalypse, Ragnarök. It is a story that plays out on a stage made from the body of a slain primeval giant: the World. The earth, oceans, sky, and clouds are all made from his bones, blood, and brain. And onto this grandest of stages, the Seeress introduces the key players of the greatest story ever told: the Æsir gods, led by Ódinn and Freyja; the Valkyries; the giants and dwarfs; dísir; dragons; and finally human beings, ourselves. Together, all these elements make the world tree Yggdrasill, a magnificent arboreal structure that fosters within its branches all there is and ever will be—the nine worlds of the Viking cosmos—while its own roots are fed by the water from the spring of Fate, which is the fuel that runs through the veins of every being in this mythical world. No one can ‘scape it, as the Three Norns who guard the spring are wont to remind both gods and men.

The Northman is a re-creation of the Viking Age. The film attempts to articulate the material side of that world as it was experienced by its inhabitants and to give an experience of the inner workings of the Viking societies, their belief systems, and the social mores that guided them throughout their everyday lives. Similar to how belief in fate ran through the veins of the early medieval Nordic cultures, the words of wisdom that ran through the entire production of The Northman was the quest for historical accuracy. It meant that everyone who took part in the years, months, days, and hours that went into the creation of the film had to be aware of what really had existed in the first decades of tenth-century Scandinavia and, at the same time, be alert to the reinterpretations and inaccurate elements that had been projected onto the Viking culture in the millennia that followed.

Therefore, in every workshop and office of the film’s production, people were reading the Icelandic sagas, watching archeological documentaries, consulting massive art